The Winter 2000 issue of "Invention and Technology" included an interesting picture (above) and description of the 20 "greatest" innovators of the 20th century, including John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Robert Noyce, and Bill Gates.
Listings of Pioneers:
CNET has started a series of articles on "The Decade in Computing". The first collection is entitled "The Visionaries".
Who are the Computer Architects? by Mark Smotherland.
Computer Pioneers by J.A.N. Lee.
"Homebrew
hobbyists who cooked up a revolution", Daily Telegraph (UK):
Personal computer: 1975 - A handful of young enthusiasts in California changed the world when they formed a couple of companies called Microsoft and Apple
Software Design and Management (Germany) Conference 2001 was on the Pioneers of Software. Held in Bonn on 28 and 29 June 2001, the program was filled with the "stars" of programming languages, software engineering, and structured programming. Their web site is a gemstone of videos and graphics worth visiting!
Individual Pioneers:
A
Picture of Ada King (nee Byron), Countess of Lovelace Ada;
additional pictures of Ada are available on-line,
in connection with the Ada Programming Language. An article by Betty
Toole is worth visiting. Worth visiting also is Hucknall
Church, 20 miles north of Nottingham in England where both Ada and her father,
Lord Byron, are buried.
Howard Hathaway Aiken by
Hallie Jones, Kalamazoo MI. A second
biography is available from St. Andrews University, Scotland.
Photograph of six members of the original ALGOL development team at the 1978
HOPL Conference Algol
John Vincent Atanasoff,
developer, with Clifford Berry, of a late 1930's electronic computing device
that has a claim to be the "first" computer and their ABC
machine. Iowa State
University has recently opened a WWW archive on Atanasoff. Access seems
to be a little slow. Here is another photograph of Atanasoff.
And finally a biography of John
Vincent Atanasoff by Hien Chris Do.
Photograph of Isaac L. Auerbach, a founder of IFIP Auerbach
B
Pictures of Charles Babbage:
Babbage and Babbage
The Charles Babbage
Institute has a home page that contains links to several other interesting
places, including a brief biography of Babbage.
An EXCELLENT collection of materials, including Java emulations, related
to Babbage's Analytical
Engine is available through the auspices of the Swiss-based Fourmilab. Constructed
by John Walker, it contains many interesting links that an enthusiast will want
to follow.
Another biography of Charles Babbage: Babbage
John Backus, leader of the team that developed FORTRAN (photo)
(biography)
Gordon Bell, senior
researcher in Microsoft's Telepresence Research Group - a part of the Bay Area
Research Center (BARC), and truly one of the pioneers of DEC. 
Bob Bemer has been involved
in making his mark in computer history since the mid-1950s -- his on-line memoirs
are a work in progress.
"Weaving
the Web : The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by
its Inventor" by Tim Berners-Lee, Mark Fischetti (Contributor), Michael
Dertouzos (on Amazon.com)
A Bibliography of sources related to the biographies
of Computer pioneers has been extracted from the recently published book
of Biographies
of Computer Pioneers.
Dan Bricklin
was the developer of Visicalc, the first spreadsheet. Here is a biography
by Adam Fleming.
Photographs of Vannevar Bush, 1930's developer of the differential analyzer
at MIT Bush,Bush
One of Bush's claims to fame is the paper he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly
entitled "As
We May Think". This same article, together with a 1964 article by Martin
Greenberger, is accessible through the Atlantic Monthly archives.
C
NOAM CHOMSKY, a biography
by Nikki Stephan, Kalamazoo, MI.
The "Father" of RISC architecture, IBM Fellow John Cocke passed away on July 16th, 2002, IBM Research News, 17 July 2002.
The obituary for Alan Coombs,
one of the developers of the Colossus at Bletchley Park, England, during World
War II.
An interview with
Seymour Cray
by David Allison of the Smithsonian Institution, a biography
by Jason Pepper and a
vignette from the MIT "Inventor of the week" archives.
J. Presper Eckert:
This site was originally created to present some of the more interesting items that were sold at auction. Artifacts and ephemera related to Dr. J. Presper Eckert, ENIAC and the early years of the computer industry were auctioned by Skinner, Inc. in Boston on April 1, 2000 and on-line in conjunction with Lycos.
D
Edsger Dijkstra by Mike Nussdorfer, Kalamazoo, MI.
E
Doug Engelbart:
F
Photograph of Jay Forrester, developer of the Whirlwind, and the matrix method of accessing core memory Forrester
G
An interview with
Bill Gates, which appeared on the WWW in December 1994; reproduced with
permission, an early
history by John Mirick and a biography
by Stacey Reitz. The movie "Pirates
of Silicon Valley" portrayed the war over intellectual property rights between
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
The biography of I. Jack Good,
cryptographer and statistician, one of the members of the Bletchley Park team
that cracked the German Enigma codes during WW II. An excellent story on Jack
also appeared in the Roanoke
Times.
H
William (Bill) Hewlett, co-founder of the HP Company, died 12 January 2001. (pdf file)
Photograph of Tony (C.A.R.)
Hoare, Turing Award winner.
A biography of Grace
Murray Hopper by Sherri Danis, a
photograph in civilian dress, and one in
uniform at the 1978 HOPL conference. Information about the US Navy Arleigh
Burke Class Destroyer named for Grace
Murray Hopper is readily available with lots of good photographs and graphics. The crest of the ship is also available.
A vignette
from the MIT "Inventor of the week" archives is worthy of a visit.
Photograph of Harry Huskey,
at the console SWAC
I
J
The Loom invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834) was a predecessor of punched card processing [Deutsches Museum, Shelburn Museum near Burlington, Vermont (USA).
Photograph of Steve Jobs
(on left) with Steve Wozniak founders of Apple Computer Corp. -- a press release
photograph from the WGBH press kit related to "The Machine That Changed the
World" Video Series. A vignette on both Jobs
and Wozniak from the MIT "Inventor of the Week" archives is worthy of a
visit though some may disagree with their designation as the inventors of the
first "ready-made" personal computer. The movie "Pirates
of Silicon Valley" portrayed the war over intellectual property rights between
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
A biography of Steve Jobs
was written by Lee Angelelli, an undergraduate student at Virginia Tech, as
part of a class asignment.
K
Mitch Kapor
was the person responsible for the spreadsheet "Lotus 1,2,3"; here
is a biography by
Steve Schneider.
A biography of Alan Kay
by Scott Gasch, CS 3604, Fall 1996, and a photograph of Alan
Kay.
Tom Kilburn, co-developer
of the world's first stored program computer at the University of Manchester.
A biography of Jack
Kilby, the original developer of the Integrated Circuit at TI and a
vignette from the MIT "Inventor of the week" archives. 
Jack St. Clair Kilby has been awarded the year 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit. (Image from Texas Instruments, http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/kilbyctr/jackstclair.shtml)
Leonard Kleinrock is known as
the Inventor of the Internet Technology, having created the basic principles
of packet switching, and the implementor of the IMP node system at UCLA (2 September
1969).
Don Knuth, programmer par
excellance, was awarded the 1996 Kyoto
Prize and now has his
own web page.
Photograph of John Kemeny, with Tom Kurtz, developer of the Dartmouth Time Sharing
System, and BASIC Kemeny
M
A
Rare Glimpse Into the Mind of a Visionary by Steve Holzman (UNISYS)
As far as I know, John McCarthy is one of only three "pioneers" to
have his own home page. Starting
from this point there are several other pages of interest to historians may
be McCarthy's own page of historical
information, primarily associated with AI and LISP.
John McCarthy, developer of LISP, and one of the founders of AI, a photograph
taken at the 1978 HOPL Conference, and a biography
by Megan Faurot, Kalamazoo, MI.
Photograph of John McPherson, Past IBM Vice President, supporter of the Fortran
project McPherson
Nick Metropolis,
dean of computing at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who was responsible for
the MANIC, a versionmof John von Neumann's IAS machine, died over the weekend
of October 17-18, 1999.
N
John
Napier, the eighth laird of Merchiston, the developer of logarithms, the
"bones" which bear his name, a (binary) chessboard computer, and the
promptuary.
John Nash
-- math genius, Nobel Prize winner, victim of schizophrenia, onetime Roanoke
resident -- though not specifically a computer pioneer has an interesting
story, that has a link to the game theory work on John von Neumann.
Photograph of Peter Naur, member of the Algol team, at the 1978 HOPL Conference
Naur
Ken Olsen founded Digital Equipment Corp. in Maynard in 1957 -- and served as its president until his retirement in 1992. Under his leadership, Digital grew from a small start-up to a $14 billion company doing business in more than 100 countries. He is now chair of Advanced Modular Solutions Inc. in Boxboro - which he founded in 1992.
O
P
Photograph of Alan
Perlis, member of the Algol team, developer of IT, professor of computer
science at CMU and Yale, at the 1978 HOPL Conference
A photograph of Piaget.
R
Mina Rees, an early
supporter of computing through the Office of Naval Research (ONR) died on October
25, 1997.
This inventor is a new one to me, but deserves a note in the history of computing
files - James
Russell, inventor of the compact disk (from the MIT "Inventor of the week"
archives.)
S
Herb Simon, Nobel Prize winner in Economics and a pioneer in AI, died 9 February 2001.
"The Computer and Me: A Restrospective Look at Some Computers and Languages" by Keith Smillie, a computer pioneer from Canada.
George Stibitz, the
developer of the first binary adder in relay technology died January 31, 1995.
Ivan E. Sutherland:
Ph.D. Thesis, 1963 -- Mass. Institute of Technology on Sketchpad: The First
Interactive Computer Graphics.
T
The Alan Turing Home Page,
maintained by Andrew Hodges, the biographer of Turing, is an excellent starting
place for a full study of this pioneer. The original page is located at Oxford
University (UK) and there is a mirror site in San
Francisco.
Photograph of Alan M. Turing
Biography of Alan M.
Turing
U
V
Photographs of John von Neumann photo1,
photo2
Biography of John
von Neumann.
W
A vignette on An
Wang from the MIT "Inventor of the week" archives.
A standard photograph of T.J.
Watson, Sr.
Photograph of Willis Ware, 1993 recipient of the IEEE-CS Pioneer Award Ware
Photograph of Joe
Wegstein, member of the COBOL development group, at the 1978 HOPL Conference.
Photographs of Maurice V.
Wilkes, developer and designer of EDSAC, professor, Cambridge University:
[1] and [2]
Biography of Maurice
V. Wilkes
Frederic Callan Williams
(1911 - 1977), co-developer of the world's first stored program computer.
Neil Wiseman
was an very influential faculty member at Cambridge University. A biography
and appreciation by Peter Robinson is available .
The
secret mission of the first [women] computer programmers by Maria Seminerio,
ZDNN
Niklaus Wirth is probably
best known as the inventor of the programming language Pascal, but he has also
be the author of other languages. A Biographical sketch by Joshua Archey, Kalamazoo,
MI.
Photograph of Steve Wozniak
(on right) and Steve Jobs, founders of Apple Computer Corp., -- a press release
photograph from the WGBH press kit related to Video Series. Woz reminisced on
his hopes for Apple in a
reponse to a Hotwired article. A biography of Steven
Wozniak by Manish Srivastava. He is one of only two pioneers of whom I am
aware has a home page.
X
Y
Z
Photographs of Konrad Zuse, 1930's designer of a very early binary computer,
whose work led to a series of Z-machines [1]
and [2].
Biography of Konrad Zuse.
An interesting display about Zuse
is also available from the Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik
is worth visiting. This also contains a link to his career as a painter. Horst
Zuse, son of Konrad Zuse, has created a tour of his
father's computers and a multi-media show that are truly worth visiting.
Recently his
program for playing chess, written in about 1942 has been implemented; this
may have been the first in the world.
Collections:
St. Andrews University (Scotland) maintains a page on the history
of mathematics that also contains some historical information about pioneers
who influenced computing. However when you see references to the University
of Vermont, translate that into Virginia Tech!
A
photo gallery of pioneer women and computers is available through the Yale
University WWW pages.
Women Pioneers in Computing,
including Betty Holberton, Jean Sammet, and Thelma Estrin, are honored in the
Augusta Ada Lovelace Award web page of the Association of Women in Computing.
A special list of "Multicians" was provided to me by Tom Van Vleck
who maintains a special page with respect to the "Multics"
project:
Last updated 2002/10/24
© J.A.N. Lee, 1998-2002.
![[2]](http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Wilkes.2.GIF){kind=link}
![[1]](http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Zuse.GIF){kind=link}
![[2]](http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Zuse.3.GIF){kind=link}